The moguls were variously annoyed or outraged at Sunset Blvd. Louis B. Mayer, Mr. Tantrum over at MGM, wanted to take up a collection to have it destroyed, in the interest of keeping tight control of studio honor. But Wilder's concoction was no ordinary exposé of Evil Tinseltown. Many of the studio types, including pompous Cecil B. DeMille and the ruthless Hedda Hopper, are seen in a very positive light. And the rank & file industry troops, as represented by an unusually jovial Jack Webb (his best role) are given great respect, not just the, 'I love the little people who made me' sentiments often heard from luminaries like Joan Crawford. There's spite and acid, but none of the sense of actually being in Hell, as in the show-biz films of Robert Aldrich: The Big Knife, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Legend of Lylah Clare, and The Killing of Sister George.

Other writers have hinted at Wilder's main scheme in Sunset Blvd., but none carry the theme out far enough. Sunset Blvd. is best understood as Billy Wilder's abstract stab at a Gothic Horror movie. For the way she dominates and finally consumes hapless Joe Gillis, Norma Desmond has been often equated with Dracula. But the parallel goes much farther. In 1950, the fan cult of Old Hollywood Lore had not yet permeated the culture, and silent films and their stars were practically forgotten. James Agee had to write big articles to revive interest in Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, whose movies were scarcely being screened anywhere.

In Sunset Blvd., the 'waxworks' that convenes at Norma's for bridge is indeed the Living Dead. Their souls and youth and vitality and success have been made immortal on film, yet what remains of their living bodies either has to acknowledge the passing of their glory, or go raving mad like Norma. Several of these stars, in 1950, were only in their fifties, age-wise. I'll bet that a real card game between Keaton, Swanson, Nilsson, and Warner would be a riot of fun - these vivacious types definitely weren't the living-dead mummies pictured here.

Wilder was possibly responding to the tawdry funeral given D. W. Griffith a couple of years before - the forgotten pioneer who was ignored to death by the town he helped create from nothing. Sunset Blvd. sees Hollywood as a Gothic because of its cruelties, its tendency celebrate its greats with fame and fortune, and then shun them into obscure misery.

That's why Sunset Blvd. plays as if the ghost of Tod Browning were on the set directing next to Billy. Norma's house is a haunted mansion with a weird pipe organ that provides an eerie tonal accompaniment. The monkey funeral is definitely something out of the Freaks school of weirdness - how many screwy horror films had mad doctors transplanting monkey glands, or gorilla brains? If this were a real horror movie, it would be revealed that the ape was Norma's previous ritual lover, sacrificed like Leo Vincey to the glory of She. Joe Gillis is merely the 'next man,' just like Tyrone Power involuntarily becomes the 'Next Geek', in Nightmare Alley. Once Gillis is caught in Norma's web, and held by her emotional pull, he's doomed. His amusement and pity give way to an almost complete domination - he's a free man by day but is drawn back to her influence by night, like a tyro vampire. Yep, Sunset Blvd. is a Horror film, through and through.

Wilder films have their little compromises here and there, but Sunset Blvd. is close to perfection. William Holden has a slick charm, informed by what must have been his own personal experience, as a once-hot property whose popularity cooled off. Resurrected by this showcase, he became one of the biggest stars ever. Gloria Swanson is almost too young to play Norma, and has to distort her face to embody the grotesque aspects of the deluded diva. She's loathsome and pitiable at the same time.

Erich von Stroheim is Wilder's trump card; the two directors had already become fast friends on Five Graves to Cairo. Von Stroheim was much more like Norma Desmond than was Swanson. She retired from the screen semi-voluntarily and wisely managed her riches. Stroheim was practically run out of town on a rail, and retreated to acting, mostly in foreign films. The kind of madness his Max represents, when we find out his true relationship with Desmond, has twice the bite when we realize that von Stroheim was Swanson's director. His fanaticism for the movies was inseparable from his perverse outlook on life. Hollywood created its own bizarre monsters, and seeing von Stroheim in Sunset Blvd. must have sent a chill down the back of many a mogul who crossed him 25 years before. With his perpetual scowl and accented voice, Max Von Mayerling is as creepy as the cryptkeeper who tended to the Mummy in the Universal Horror movies.

In the end, Wilder gets to have his cake and eat it too - the final scene combines the tabloid scoop of the century with a Dance Macabre of madness. It's the genre's 'monster revealed' scene where all the horror comes out in the open. The beautifully - shot ending doesn't fade or dissolve away - it disintegrates into a gauzy haze of glamorous insanity. Sunset Blvd. is Billy Wilder's look at Hollywood, as Grand Guignol.

The most informative mini-docu on the disc is a piece on composer Franz Waxmann, whose sweeping score turns a tango into a death dance. We learn therein that Waxmann's first big smash Hollywood score, appropriately supporting Savant's thesis, was The Bride of Frankenstein. In his previous European career, he composed jazzy film music, as with 'Billie' Wilder's French Mauvaise Graine.

The menus are slick but perhaps a tad overdone, and the 'exclusive' Edith Head docu is repeated from To Catch a Thief. An academic commentary is provided by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov. One final extra is a location map something like the one on the L.A. Confidential disc. Savant lives dead center in the map shown, about three blocks South of Paramount; everything said about the locations is true except for there being a gas station at Irving and Wilshire where the 'Desmond' mansion once stood. I wish there were one there, as it would be very convenient.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Sunset Blvd. rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Docus, stills, trailer, outtakes from the lost original opening scene
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: November 18, 2002